We are entering in the last month of 2023…the major news is redundant and usually one-sided.

On the local news front….we here on the Gulf Coast have had some winter weather and even some rain other than that not much happening to speak of right now.

As of midnight yesterday the Hurricane Season officially ended….good news for us.

Time to move on to the Dump, news that is not the other type…..never redundant or boring….

I had a difficult time looking for interesting stuff for the dump it was exhausting….there is not that much last week.

This is a dire report that I felt I needed to lead with before the usual menage…..

I’m going to be frank: Humans have not been good for the planet in any real way. We are largely responsible for the rapid loss of our home’s biodiversity (plant, animal, and insect), and with it, the planet’s ability to support its complex life systems. In short, the Earth’s future is in such peril that even the scientists studying it can hardly grasp the truth. (1)

Recently published research that reviews over 150 studies from around the world outlined just how bad Earth’s future is looking. All of the planet’s problems are tied to human population growth and consumption, which is still worsening by the day. (1)

The damage that humans continue to do to the planet will be felt for centuries. The fate of the planet and all of its species – including the human race – is under serious threat. (1)

Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp

Since AI in all it’s glory is a news item these days….let’s start there…..

With algorithm Q*, OpenAI may have achieved ‘agent AI’ or first phase AGI. What harm might Q* and its like yield? What good?

Ultimately, the core question for society is not what can AI do but what should it do. It is for society, not the tech giants, to decide, but we haven’t even started to address this question yet.

On May 17, 2023, AI’s new poster child, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, went before the Senate Judicial Sub-Committee to plead with lawmakers to create regulations that would embrace the powerful promise of AI while mitigating the risk that it will overpower humanity.

In June, Senators Hawley and Blumenthal produced a framework for a bill to regulate the US AI industry and do the probably impossible: square Altman’s circle.

On October 30, President Biden signed an Executive Order requiring AI developers to share the results of their safety tests with Federal agencies before releasing new products onto the market.

A few days later, tensions within OpenAI between the guardians of its original mission to develop AGI for the overall benefit of humanity and the new entrepreneurial culture of bringing new products to market as fast and widely as possible helped to blow the company apart, temporarily at least. Q* may have been the detonator.

https://www.verdict.co.uk/ai-is-running-wild-and-we-havent-seen-anything-yet/

I guess I have seen too many scifi movies but I do not trust AI one whit.

One another disastrous front….could aliens wipe us out as so many scifi movies tell us?

Scientists have identified two possible exoplanets where aliens could have lived for five billion years before life on Earth ever began.

The planets could exist in our own Milky Way galaxy and share many similarities with planet earth, allowing for a civilisation to thrive. It has long been held the belief that if there is alien life out there in the universe, it would likely be much less advanced than human kind and would more likely be closer to microbes than mammals.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/aliens-could-wipe-out-earth-31477574

Speaking of aliens I recently posting about some theory that microscopic lifeforms could have come here in the early days of this planet from meteors which makes them aliens and I made joke that since octopi are so smart that they were the aliens….well seems I am not alone….

A weird quirk of evolution is that biologically it keeps popping out crabs, in fact things evolve into crab-like crustaceans so often that scientists had to name the effect – carcinisation. Oceanic evolution is weird because it’s an entirely different environment than our own, so radically different the closest comparison is space travel. The ocean is full of monsters that mystify and amaze us, but some people think the biology of some sea-swimming animals is so bizarre they might just be literal aliens from outer space. Enter the octopus.

We all know octopi are weird, so weird we can’t even agree on if the plural is octopi, octopuses, or octopodes. They have no bones, are scary intelligent, travel around with jet propulsion, change their skin colors, and shoot ink clouds at their enemies – and that’s not to mention the obvious eight arms they all have. While their strange biology is fascinating, their cognitive intelligence may actually be a key source in understanding how to study extraterrestrial intelligence. It’s difficult to imagine alien thought-processing because we can only think in human ways and even those can vary widely.  

https://exemplore.com/news/octopus-alien-theory

WE all have heard the commitment by nations to helping curb the carbon emissions….Saudi Arabia is one of those countries but in reality they just give lip service….

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is publicly committed to curbing carbon emissions — but apparently that’s just lip service, according to a new investigation that found the petrostate has plans to get developing countries hooked on its lucrative fossil fuel exports.

Reporting from the nonprofit journalism organization Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and Channel 4 News found that Saudi Arabia calls the scheme an “oil sustainability program” on an English-language government website, with one of its stated goals as “increasing sustainability. But in the Arabic version, it’s called an “oil demand sustainability programme” that’s meant to “sustain and develop the demand for hydrocarbons as a competitive source of energy, by raising its economic and environmental efficiency.”

The country will achieve this by focusing on developing countries like those in Africa and by fostering the increased use of fossil fuel vehicles, in addition to developing oil-hungry supersonic air travel, collaborating on the creation of an inexpensive internal combustion engine at scale, and other projects intended to prop up carbon-emitting industry and infrastructure in poorer countries worldwide.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/saudi-arabia-oil-developing-countries

So that target of 2050 is just BS….but then I never believed the bastards anyway.

Now for some medical news…..

Researchers have used human tracheal cells to create tiny biological robots that can move on their own and work together to encourage healing in damaged neurons without requiring genetic modifications. The tiny bots have the potential to transform regenerative medicine and the treatment of disease.

Micro-sized robots created with living cells – biobots – are being developed to carry out various tasks inside the human body, from drug delivery to recognizing cancer cells. Now, researchers at Tufts University and Harvard’s Wyss Institute have taken a crack at creating their own biobot using human tracheal cells.

https://newatlas.com/medical/human-tracheal-cells-biobots-promote-neuron-growth/

There is a potential here that could revolutionize treatments….and the prospect of it being used in a bad way as well.

Finally a story I came across that for the life of me I cannot see any reason for it to be in the news….

Talk about a problem of cosmic, uh, proportions. A recent rat study conducted by NASA-funded researchers found that deep space travel might inflict long-lasting erectile dysfunction symptoms on male astronauts — a problem that may even persist after they return to Earth.

According to the research, which was published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s FASEB Journal, the galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) that astronauts would be exposed to during long-term space travel could cause damage to spacefarers’ erectile tissues, leading to potentially decades-long genital woes.

The discovery “exposes a new health risk to consider with deep space exploration,” as the researchers write in the study.

To test how GCR and microgravity might impact erectile tissues, the researchers subjected 86 male rats to four weeks of experiments at NASA’s Space Radiation Laboratory in New York. In the experiments, rats were first anesthetized, and then held in harnesses at 30-degree angles while exposed to various levels of radiation designed to mimic that of GCR.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/bad-news-astronauts-genitals

So your next trip into space be sure to pack some ‘blue pills’.

That is a wrap…I hope you learned something today….or at least were entertained.

Have a great Saturday and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”